Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-29/In focus

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Re: The Epstein article. There seems to be a few of points to look at here. First is the obvious and longtime problem of paid promotional editing, especially as it relates to BLPs. That has been discussed and debated ad nauseum so I will confine myself to restating my view that paid editing should be banned, period. Entities that engage in the practice should be barred from the encyclopedia and if required, the WMF should be prepared to pursue legal remedies. The second and somewhat more complicated issue is detection of persistent and often professionally orchestrated POV editing. This may require a look into the editing history of target articles to see if there is a pattern. Unfortunately this can be hit and miss depending on who is watching the article and how alert they are. I would suggest that anytime we see this kind of SPA/IP promotional editing that it trigger a quick look to see if it has been going on for a while. Finally there is the question of responding to this sort of thing once detected. That at least is not altogether complicated. Articles subject to WP:BLP are also subject discretionary sanctions. I suspect a lot of admins, myself included, are at least somewhat reluctant to pull that particular trigger. But extended confirmed page protection is an obvious and powerful deterrent to this sort of thing. It won't stop those who are highly motivated to push their assigned version of facts, but it will make their life more difficult. Editors who discover evidence of a pattern of POV editing on a BLP should not hesitate to alert an admin or formally request page protection at RfPP. And admins should not shy away from ECPP if the evidence of concerted POV editing is clear. A quick look at the protection log for the Epstein article shows that while semi-protection has been applied intermittently, extended confirmed has never been employed as of this posting. Obviously we can't EC protect every article that sees some POV editing, so a little judgement is called for. But when an article has seen repeated bouts of this sort of thing, admins should be prepared to elevate the protection, if necessary for a lengthy period of time. Paid POV editing represents a serious and longstanding threat to the integrity of the project. Our response to this pernicious behavior should reflect that reality. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:54, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that needed to be said. A couple of things should be noted. 7-8 years ago, some things were quite different, e.g. very little enforcement against UPE. I was actually quite impressed with some of the admins, e.g. it only took 2 months to get 2 cited fact removers indefinitely banned. I'd love to see that now. But tthat admin wasn't around that much on this article. Just removing cited info has to be the dumbest type of paid editing. It's just so obvious. There were 2 or 3 things that just clicked for me when I looked at this. 1) pushing down material to the bottom. How many times have I seen that? 2) Forking (to the foundation article in this case) - yeah that should be pretty obvious in hindsight, the one that surprised me that I've seen before (and didn't try to explain in the article) is 3) the article switch - trying to create Jeffrey Epstein (plastic surgeon) at the same time as trying to delete Jeffrey Epstein. If it isn't obvious by now, I think there's a lot to be learned from these case studies. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:51, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

the article on the plastic surgeon was speedy deleted as an advertisement 4 hours after being submitted. It was such a blatant advertisement that I wasn't even thinking about the JE case when I removed it. DGG ( talk ) 17:21, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: As I'm sure you know, sometimes our rules aren't so clear. I wanted to avoid anything even looking like impropriety on this article and was pressed for time, so I didn't even ask about this. Am I allowed to request bringing back a deleted article, e.g. into my user space, in order to check the authorship and see what it said? Rather than improving it for publication, that is. I'm as convinced as I can be at this point that the article was some type of diversion, likely a try of switching the two articles, or maybe just bogging down the readers by taking them to a disambig page. I don't really need this info now, but it would be nice to know in the future. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:54, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Smallbones, I think User:Theroadislong/PROD log#February 2012 has at least part of the answer you are looking for. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:58, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Smallbones, I looked at the deleted article for the plastic surgeon. I don't know if it would be undeleted for you, you'd have to ask and have more of a reason than curiousity. There were just four edits, 2 by Turvill and 2 by editors tagging it for problems. There were no references, it was just puff stuff. I don't understand exactly why Turvill would have created it. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Liz: Now I know what I'm not allowed to do. That is a very strange 1st edit for a new editor, one soon to become an SPA on the topic of Jeffrey Epstein. The only thing I can think of is as some type of distraction. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:58, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you so sure it was a new account? Editors with a barely 10 day old account rarely speak of cabals and reporting others to the BLP noticeboard. Or for that matter demonstrate familiarity with BLP policies when hours old. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:24, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well it was a new account, but I don't believe for a moment that they were a new user. Let's see: similar writing style (and usual length of text) to a blocked user, more or less the same pages edited, same pro-Epstein single purpose POV, timing since block. I'm sure nobody here would take that as absolute proof. Too bad we don't have a tool that indicates "writing similarity", or "overall editing similarity." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are such tools in existence, of course; it's called stylometry or authorship analysis. There's an interesting video featuring Patrick Juola and some resources here: [1] ☆ Bri (talk) 19:28, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this article. I was going to write an op-ed on suspicious editing patterns at Greg Lindberg before I realized how close the print deadline was. Glad to see we had something else to act as a good case study. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:14, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Indy beetle: Just took a look at Greg Lindberg and your suspicions are entirely justified. If there is anymore of that, ping me or alert another admin. I will block the editor and if needed, protect the page. I am going to warn the SPA. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ad Orientem:@Smallbones: Well, now I'm definitely going to be writing an op-ed. Greg Lindberg : Revision History -Indy beetle (talk) 18:51, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... Last edit 30 January 2015, blocked 27 November 2019. Yet again and again I see reports of spammers and vandals closed with no action taken on the grounds of "no recent edits" or "no recent activity." Are the rules different for high profile cases? --Guy Macon (talk) 03:35, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]